japan blog

A. Japan’s deputy prime minister Taro Aso was in trouble after blaming women without children for “Japan’s demographic woes.” He says that its not the elderly causing the decrease of Japan’s population but it is the women who choose not to give birth. The article also talks about how more people are dying then being born and how it’s birth rate needs to go up. Mothers who do have children struggle to find available facilities such as day care. They talk about how the government needs to do more to help balance careers and family. The rate of women going back to work after becoming moms has increased but they are getting paid less or “get stuck on the career ladder”. The article basically is saying that for many women they don’t want to start families because of the situation they will be in afterward due to the Japanese government, and that it’s not their fault that the population is falling but the governments.

B. The problem is that the Japanese government isn’t doing enough to help people balance careers and family. They also need to better facilitate those who do have children so that more people want to have kids and the population doesn’t continue to decrease.

C. This is something that they need to heavily consider because the consequences of a decreasing population are massive. They need to take action quickly and find a way to boost their birth rate. This I believe does have an impact on us here. I believe that its still common in the United states that after moms return to work they aren’t always treated the same. This can make it hard for people to want to return back into the labor force. Therefor not wanting to have kids, and focus on careers becomes a better option for many women. Although it’s not necessarily as big of an issue here as it is in Japan, our government should do what they can to make sure it doesn’t get worse and women are being treated fairly.

We selected Japan. We chose it because we both thought it would be an interesting country to learn more about. I expect we’re going to learn a lot more about Japanese culture or Asian culture as a whole. I didn’t initially have a lot of questions about Japan but I am curious about Japanese cuisine and the day to day life of the middle class Japanese person.